The Touch (1971)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Touch (1971) – I. Bergman

Bergman’s first English language feature (that still takes place in Sweden and with Swedish spoken when English-speakers are not around) focuses on a messy extra-marital affair. Bibi Andersson is a housewife married to doctor Max von Sydow. He is a loving husband and they have two early teen children but perhaps her life feels boring to her (we are not really given any intimations of this but Bergman offers a sardonic view of her daily routine).  When she meets archaeologist Elliott Gould (a patient of her husband’s working on renovating a medieval church), he is full on and doesn’t hold back on his attempts to seduce her.  She gives in and they have an affair, despite his manic-depressive and violent behaviour. It goes on for a while until inevitably von Sydow finds out. Gould leaves for England and Andersson follows but does not find him, returning to Sweden to pick up her life. Late in the film, we are given some explanations about the causes of his erratic behaviour but they don’t feel satisfying. Nor does the incredibly abrupt ending. That said, Andersson’s performance is brave and subtle; Gould is loose and modern (but seems miscast). The film is endowed with some beautiful autumnal cinematography (albeit in some grubby locations). Not quite as harrowing as other Bergman films in this vein, so this may or may not be the right place to start with the Swedish master, depending on how intense you like your films.

 

Bergman Island (2021)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Bergman Island (2021) – M. Hansen-Løve

I won tickets to this film and it seemed like fate, since I’ve been regularly watching Bergman films from my Criterion boxset over the last couple of years. (But the experience was a bit strange, as I turned out to be the only viewer in the small 16-seat cinema). Mia Hansen-Løve’s film does offer rewards to those familiar with the great director’s oeuvre.  For example, it takes place on Fårö, the island where he made many of his classic films (Persona, Through a Glass Darkly, Shame, Hour of the Wolf) and where he retired and lived out his later years. As portrayed by the film, the island seems to have become a bit of a Bergman theme park with a “Safari” taking tourists to the various locations from his films and also his house (fully maintained with his book and video libraries and private screening room). Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth play a film-making couple who have retreated to the island to work on their latest screenplays and to find inspiration. I only realised later that this relationship echoed Hansen-Løve’s own relationship with Olivier Assayas.  I expected that the film would tackle the angsty themes of Bergman, about humans forsaken by God (if God even exists) or the difficulties of communicating with others (even those we love).  But Hansen-Løve’s film never gets quite that dark. The second half, in which Krieps tells her screenplay idea to Roth and we see it enacted onscreen (by Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie), investigates relationships more thoroughly (“the invisible spaces between people”) and presents greater possibilities for crossed wires and misinterpreted actions – but still remains rather gentle, focusing on the emotional dramas of young people (that we older people might now see in a different light, as over-dramatic in the larger context of life). So, although the film didn’t go where I thought it would go, its lack of a formulaic (or predictable) plot is one of its great strengths.  The frank discussions of Ingmar Bergman, his work and his life, both celebrating and critiquing are another high point, with characters identifying both strengths and weaknesses of the director. A particularly poignant critique targets the luxury of being a privileged male artist supported by six wives who raised his children and allowed him freedom to pursue his work, something that Hansen-Løve might feel somewhat acutely as a woman and mother, in comparison to her (former) partner Assayas.

 

The Verdict (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Verdict (1946) – D. Siegel

Don Siegel’s first directorial outing is a re-teaming of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre (from The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca). Greenstreet plays a police superintendent who accidentally supplies evidence which sends an innocent man to the gallows. Lorre is one of his friends, a decadent artist, who becomes one of the suspects (at least for viewers) when the brother of the woman killed earlier is also murdered.  Intriguingly, this turns out to be a classic “locked room” mystery, because the body is found in a room with the door and windows locked from the inside.  Siegel, who we probably know best for his partnership with Clint Eastwood in the ‘60s and ‘70s (resulting in Dirty Harry, 1971), does an adequate job here with the Gothic Victorian period piece (same era as Sherlock Holmes, and also featuring some character actors from the Rathbone/Bruce series filming contemporaneously). I’ll admit that my attention wavered a bit, as not all of the red herring characters were interesting enough, but the twist at the end is deliciously surprising and satisfying.

Pasolini (2014)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Pasolini (2014) – A. Ferrara

Willem Dafoe plays Pier Paolo Pasolini, the famous Italian writer-director, a gay Marxist who courted scandal and was murdered in the early 1970s. Abel Ferrara’s film shows the last day or so in his life. By no means a standard biopic, but instead a series of scenes/episodes that may or may not shed light on Pasolini’s character. The main theme that comes through is about the need to create and to stay true to one’s vision. Ferrara and Pasolini, as directors, shared a certain fearlessness, a willingness to put things on screen that might cross the line or enrage the censors. Ferrara’s best known film might be Bad Lieutenant, where Harvey Keitel shows us why his titular characters is so bad.  Pasolini had a more successful and varied career but his final film, Salo, probably created the most scandal (I haven’t seen it but there are clips in this film). He also created films based on literary works, such as the Gospels, the Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights, etc. after an early career releasing some provocative character studies.  Ferrara includes some pornographic scenes in the current film for good measure. Dafoe loses himself in the character and benefits from Ferrara’s moody style. No judgments are made about Pasolini’s lifestyle – although you get the sense that his late night trysts with gay hustlers are an escape from the stresses of his day job, a tragic escape, as it turns out.   

This Gun for Hire (1942)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

This Gun for Hire (1942) – F. Tuttle

First teaming of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake who went on to star together in a few further films. I’ve read that they did not like each other very much.  It doesn’t really show here, perhaps because Ladd plays a cool hitman (Raven; very likely the forerunner of Delon’s Jef Costello in Melville’s Le Samourai).  Raven doesn’t show much emotion (except briefly when helping a small child) but you do sense his fondness toward Lake, at least later in the picture, after he is thwarted from rubbing her out as a witness. The plot (from Graham Greene) is a little convoluted – Ladd is hired by Laird Cregar, a chemical company exec who pays to wipe out a blackmailer who is about to expose him as selling formulas for weapons to the enemy (this is WWII). He pays Ladd in marked bills and tells the cops that Ladd stole them.  Soon enough, Ladd spends some money and the dragnet is after him. Lake, the girlfriend of the cop after Ladd, accidentally meets Ladd on a train (after being recruited by a Senator seeking to uncover Cregar’s nefarious actions to get dirt on him) but he takes her hostage when Cregar tips them off that he’s on the train.  Of course, crime doesn’t pay (with the Hays Code still in existence), so it doesn’t end well for Ladd (or Cregar). This early film noir captures the look of the genre and, although we don’t ever identify with Ladd, there’s a fatalistic sense that he’s the victim of a terrible childhood that he could never escape. Not yet the noir theme of the fatal mistake that dooms a protagonist but we’re on the way there.

 

Quiz (2020)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Quiz (2020) – S. Frears

I did not know – or had completely forgotten – that anyone had ever successfully cheated at “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” But it really happened in the UK in the early 2000s. Stephen Frears’ three-part mini-series dramatises this event beginning with the development of the game show concept for ITV by the original producers, then depicts the cheating scandal and how it unfolded, and then closes with the consequences – the trial of Charles and Diana Ingram. I picked this up from the library because of my natural interest in quizzes/game shows. The first two episodes were the most gripping, detailing the mechanics of the game and how the Ingrams and others tried to beat the system set up by the production company in order to get on the show (answering questions on the telephone) and then into the hot-seat (fastest fingers) and then to win. The background family drama about the Ingrams is interspersed a bit but it seems that Frears is not really particularly interested in them – and the film’s third segment suffers because it wants us to believe that the Ingrams might actually be innocent -- which seems somewhat unbelievable given all that has gone before (but perhaps not entirely impossible).  More interesting are the reactions of the producers to the possibility that they’ve been gamed and the psychological effects on them. All told, it was a fun watch but lost steam in its third act.